Re: kernel support for non-English user messages

[Matti Aarnio]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 12:57:28PM -0400, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> Alan Cox wrote:
... 
>   I still see some problems...
>   For one, there are 131 instances of:
>       printk("%s\n", blurb);
> 
> in various forms in 2.5.66.  Besides possible ritual immolation of
> those responsible for such things, something would have to be done
> about them.

Think again.  In case the "blurp" COULD have "%" in them...

>   Another problem is the one of getting that text onto the console
> in readable form. The only thing I can think of is have a two-stage
> process where printk puts the data into the log buffer as
> zero-terminated strings and then the console write routines format
> it for display.  They'd probably need their own buffers to do that.

Many of kernel's terse messages do need small encyclopedic articles
to explain them.  Present  gobble-de-gook  can not be made clear by
merely supplying  l10n  translations of them to other gobble-de-gook.

Having ANCIENT STYLE numeric message code references will help users
to find definitive explanations of them.   "My machine said: 
'1-00234-0627 eth0 link down'  and  then it said: '1-00234-0626 eth0 link up'"
(Where initial digit is severity qualifier, then subsystem id, and
finally codepoint within subsystem.  All within 32-bit integer.)
(And probably base64-ish presentation in dmesg buffer, not base10..)

Some tool can produce HTML hyperlinked presentation of the messages
with colour coding telling message classifications as text line backgrounds:
  green:  info/chatty, can ignore
  blue:   something notable happened (like linkstate jumps)
  yellow: something possibly serious
  red:    something definitely serious

at the same time the tool can produce hyperlinks with user's language
preferences (picked from environment/desktop parameters), and point
all that to some site with e.g. a twiki to accumulate documentation.
Vendors could also pull database snapshots into those tools.

That message-code style was introduced, when machines had very little
memory,  but style being in use from the dawn of computing is not
a good reason to shun it.  It really has benefits.

> > %s: went up in flames\n\0eth0\0\0
> 
>   Is that "\n" an actual ASCII newline or the printk escape sequence?

The backslash is not "printk escape".  It is C-string compilation 
notation.

/Matti Aarnio